


Good Deeds

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [6]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Animal Friends, Beast Wirt, Now for something slightly more positive!, Other, Prince Wirt AU, Wirt is basically a Disney Princess, good deeds, otgw - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 04:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21230012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: After Enoch but before Beatrice, Wirt challenges his fate by trying to be... good.  Looking like a Beast does not mean he has to act like one, and maybe a happy ending is as simple as rewriting his role from portender of doom to a caretaker of sorts...





	Good Deeds

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place right after Wirt leaves Pottsfield. Weren't you curious to know what happened between then and Beatrice's house?

“Enoch… his name was Enoch!”

Wirt groans when remembers the Pottsfield mayor’s name several hours after he leaves the feline’s town, and smacks himself on the forehead. “Did I ever even _see_ him as a cat? What kind of a place elects a _cat_ their mayor?”

He mutters and muses to himself to distance his thoughts from uneasy questions. Enoch’s scrutiny had imbalanced Wirt—tipping his mind the way a cat shoves a glass of water off a table just to see what happens. A blush of chagrin follows the novice Beast for many uncomfortable nights. His misery doesn’t abandon him… but the possibility of _not_ being totally doomed compresses it into a more manageable knot behind his sternum. 

Enoch hadn’t retreated from Wirt in fear. That was something. Although, the crafty feline was obviously more than he appeared—so maybe Wirt shouldn’t take the cat confidently pawing at him as a sign that Wirt himself is not as scary as he believes he is. Enoch had puppeteered a looming shell during Pottsfield’s harvest and knew about Greg, despite the fact that only Beatrice and the Woodsman had witnessed the awful ordeal. Wirt harbors the suspicion that Enoch let him get off easy for trespassing this time.

For weeks, the new Beast tries to convince himself that everything will eventually work out. He will discover a way to keep his soul aflame that doesn’t involve burning Edelwood—which necessitates _creating_ Edelwood. Wirt isn’t a bad person (not a _great_ person, he understands, but definitely not _evil_ like his predecessor) so it’s probably a matter of time before a more optimistic solution presents itself. He may appear monstrous, but he is not a monster. Not in his heart. If he should learn anything from Greg, it’s the importance of searching for that thin silver lining, the hidden good, the happy ending.

Enoch made it sound as if Wirt’s total corruption _isn’t_ inevitable. 

Was he stupid for listening to a _cat?_

Undertaker. Guardian. Beast. Boy.

Was the power to choose truly in Wirt’s hands? Did taking The Beast’s place necessarily mean inheriting his malevolence?

Wirt _wants_ to be better. He wants to be the brother that Greg deserved from the beginning. He wishes to recapture the courage that made him face down the demonic nightmare eating his sibling and use it to make himself… worthy. He can’t return home to practice selflessness and bravery and confidence. He’ll have to make do _here,_ in a land that reviles the creature whose crown he stole. The Unknown is only hell if he _lets_ it be hell, right?

He prefers to avoid a repeat of his encounter with the young boy and girl—the ones who thought Wirt was going to steal them. (Wirt also thought he was going to steal them, and he sincerely needs to learn to quell that urge if he’s going to improve himself and not become The Beast: The Sequel). This leaves the boy with few options for testing his mettle against his beastly compulsions. 

He’ll take whatever opportunities he unearths. In all the fairytales he’s read over the years—in all the story books piled by his poetry tomes—help can sneak in from unexpected places, from secretive benefactors. Elves that cobble shoes by night. Birds that drop tokens on windowsills. Wirt can step in to assist without ever showing his face.

It isn’t a solid plan, but it’s a plan. He won’t give up easily this time.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The first people Wirt helps aren’t technically people. They’re beavers. Beavers almost as tall as he is, but beavers nonetheless. They’re dressed in rags and huddled on a riverbank and judging by the chittering sounds passed between them they’re upset.

Wirt’s gaze travels downstream and he figures out why: the mass of branches and logs they’ve used to construct their dam has crumbled. Twigs and teacups and stray pieces of furniture are being washed away by the glacial current. They could rebuild their house, probably, but not before losing their belongings. They’re essentially homeless. 

“Okay. I can fix this. I can do… nature magic, or whatever. Can’t I?” Wirt wrings his fingers together. The memory of binding himself in brambles is hazy; he knows he _made_ all those thorny vines grow, but he doesn’t remember how he accomplished it. The plants merely… responded to him. He unleashes a long, controlled exhale through his nose. He can figure this out. Helping some homeless beavers is a small start—completely doable. Their dam is already wrecked, so he can’t make it much worse. Can he? 

Mismatched shoes creep almost soundlessly over the snow as Wirt edges toward the ruined dam, glad that the beavers are too distraught to notice him creeping. He places his hands on the trunk of an old, half-hollowed tree that leans out over the river, and whispers to the thread of life hiding faintly under the bark.

“Fall.” It creaks beneath his hands, slow to obey. Wirt frowns. “..._Please_ fall.”

The tree acquiesces, gasping out its final farewell. Roots rip free from the dirt. Wirt flails backward to avoid getting uppercut and watches triumphantly as the enormous log swoops downward and falls just ahead of the leaking dam—slamming into the river, branches and ice sheets shattering on impact with a sound like a shotgun blast. Reverberations judder through the ground. The beavers—which went silent at the abrupt crashing of the log—all start chattering excitedly, racing each other to inspect what’s happened.

The fallen tree stops the rest of the beavers’ belongings from floating downriver. Its broken pieces will work well to replace the dam’s lost materials. It’s sloppy, but effective. Wirt magically lumberjacked a solution and pulls off escaping into the woods without the beavers noticing his presence.

His heart feels lighter. _Baby steps._

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The Pilgrim maintains his wariness of people, reasoning that he can approach human beings again when he has a better grip on this whole “good Beast” thing. Perhaps he can treat his own humanity like an atrophied muscle—strengthening it until his name doesn’t slip through his fingers when he scents hopelessness taunting him on the winter wind. 

Animals fear The Beast like they fear death. He is the Unknown’s apex predator… but Wirt would feel better if his “subjects” felt more at ease when he wanders through the wooded halls of his kingdom. Animals don’t trigger his hunting instincts the way human hearts do, so it’s safer to practice his benevolent techniques upon wild creatures.

Noon ascends into a blanched-blue sky dappled with lacy clouds three days after Wirt helped the beaver family. He lifts his twinkling eyes to the treetops. The shivering of cold creatures huddled in their nests reaches him as a faint vibration against his skin.

“Okay… we’ll try some home improvement.”

Wirt is by no means an athletic guy. Flashbacks of gym class humiliation make him hesitate as he approaches the first tree: an ancient hickory housing a colony of red squirrels. But it’s actually not hard to haul himself up the sturdy bottom branches, and with each step and handhold his confidence swells. The sleepy hickory exudes encouragement, guiding his hands and feet. Wirt hoists himself onto a bough where a pair of teeny russet bodies quiver in their bundle of sticks and leaves. They flinch at the sapphire glow intruding on their nap. 

“Hello, squirrels,” Wirt blabs awkwardly. “I—er—_ahem_... I’m h-here to help. I guess? I’m gonna… I’ll try to… you’ll see.”

Their little hearts drum frantically when he cups their home between his palms. The hickory stirs at Wirt’s polite command and bends nearby twigs to anchor the nest, threading thin fingers into the gaps to solidify its walls and insulate the squirrels against the nipping chill. Then Wirt inches away to admire his handiwork.

“That’s better, isn’t it? Nice and cozy.” The gentleness of his voice dampens the animals’ anxiety. While Wirt climbs up to the next branch, the squirrels poke their heads out to observe this odd Beast with their bright black eyes.

He’s garnered a small audience of ginger-tailed critters by the time he reaches the last nest at the top of the hickory. 

“_Bracken houses/ Downy beds._” A poem that Wirt absently makes up as he climbs and as he coaxes the tree into grasping each precious bundle. “_A soft safe place/ To rest their heads._ And… I think that’s all of them. Ha. Easy as—WHOA—”

Something jumps onto his right antler and Wirt drops down a level before the hickory catches him under the armpits. He’s still freaking out about his near-death experience when several more weights drop onto his antlers and his shoulders—bushy red tails and pinprick claws and twitching whiskers. High-pitched squawking surrounds him from all sides. “Oh my god—don’t attack me, please, I was just trying to help—” 

He shuts his eyes tight—prepared for iminent gauging. Except… the squirrels don’t all simultaneously gnaw on him. They don’t even scratch him, except by accident. They’re pressing in to get as close as possible and sniff him with their wet button noses, the squirrels that can’t find room on his antlers scampering above him in the higher boughs. They’re not afraid, or attacking. Wirt thinks they’re… thanking him?

His ears turn pink. So does the glow of his eyes, warming to a rosy hue that reflects from the hundred grateful stares boring into his face. “Uh. You’re welcome. It was no trouble, honest—_ouch._ Th-that’s all right, I don’t need any more presents tossed at my head, thanks. No. Really. Keep the acorns to yourselves.” 

The passengers on his antlers ride their perch all the way down. Once Wirt’s feet hit the snow, they scurry back up the hickory and into their reinforced abodes. A few more nuts pelt the ground around him as he leaves—black walnuts and more acorns and of course some hickory shells—and then he’s off to the next project, a bashful grin tentatively tipping one corner of his mouth.

Not every creature needs a helping hand. Some are so frightened by Wirt that he decides he’d do less harm by simply passing them by. But he climbs more trees, repairs more nests, and as the sun sets he’s amassed several shifts of admirers that take turns alighting onto his antlers: chirping cardinals and tweezer-beaked crossbills, shy buntings and greyish waxwings, bright yellow grosbeaks and scarlet-capped redpoles. Squirrels run back and forth across branch-bridges to follow him. 

At one point all the small creatures vanish… Wirt worries he’s made the wrong move and scared them off—and startles at the demanding _hoot_ of a grand snowy owl sitting starkly ivory against the indigo evening sky. She leads him imperiously toward a hilly field just beyond the forest and supervises while Wirt obscures her grounded nest with a bush’s pointed twigs.

The forest murmurs a new title for Wirt in the wake of his modest good deeds. It’s a name determined by the animals that are beginning to draw closer out of curiosity rather than withdrawing from dread, more and more of them in the days that ensue. Deer led to better grazing. Wildcats that dispatch of sick, suffering rabbits. Predators and prey. 

Wirt is still The Beast to them… but now he is also The Caretaker.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Wirt psychs himself up when he spots solitary cabins tucked into the forest, the souls of those inside hungry and desperate. A song pushes at his throat—lilting notes to lure weakened people out into the snow—yet he bites the urge back. He has eased this harsh winter for countless animals; surely he can do _one small thing_ for a _few_ people. 

Every time he finds a lonely house, The Beast—The Caretaker—waits until midnight to move. His eyes still gleam bright as stars in the crisp dark but as long as he’s quiet and swift there’s no reason anyone should awaken and find him lurking nearby.

Wirt fills his hands with rare edible treats hidden in the woods, not questioning his instinctual knowledge. Doorsteps are piled with whatever he can find in the area: hop hornbeam seeds, chickweed and watercress greens, grapes freeze-dried into raisins, purple juniper berries and vivid cranberries, rosehips and pine nuts. If he asks nicely, the plants he harvests from do their best to offer a healthy bounty. Interested animals trail after him—nibbling at what he uncovers—but they’re wise enough not to touch what Wirt leaves at the cabins. These gifts are met with incredulous joy when people open their doors at dawn, people glancing this way and that in case their mystery benefactor is around to thank. 

He never is. The single time Wirt almost has a run-in with an early riser he retreats into the woods faster than a hare with sparks lighting its rump.

Once in a while, there isn’t enough foraging to accumulate more than a handful of food. For these homes, Wirt takes armfuls of firewood so that at least the occupants won’t be cold. He carries no axe, but dead trees split into good timber with enough willpower wrenching apart the splinters.

Wirt lets various pangs of destitution guide him through the Unknown like beacons. He meanders like a dust mote caught in a gale, following the scent of need, optimistic for once that he didn’t irrevocably ruin his life by blowing out the Lantern. Each place he leaves feels a bit warmer to him than it was before. Despair thaws and Wirt realizes that the hard tug in his chest cavity loosens in miniscule increments. He _can_ be better than his Beastly impulses. A selfish monster wouldn’t lead fox kits back to their den or lend his time to strangers who will never know who he is. He will be the kind of Beast that Gregory would want to befriend... the kind that would make his little brother proud.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Track: "White Nights" by Oh Land
> 
> \---
> 
> The bonus tracks aren't so much linked to every story as they are to my otgw/fic aesthetic overall - though I do try to match up the music somewhat. Hope you guys are enjoying the tunes!
> 
> This was supposed to be the first chapter of the next story and then it got too long :3c Thought it would be better to split both chapters up into separate entities before moving onto the OTHER events that occur just before Beatrice runs into Wirt with arrows sticking out of his spine. I actually started on those more recent scenes before this story so I hope it's not all a complete mess hahaha oops.
> 
> Wirt's new title was inspired by "The Pilgrim's Progress" series by Antares8. If you haven't read that series yet - what are you doing here in this trash?!
> 
> Edit: OH BEANS I almost forgot!!! Whiggity, wonderful author of the crossover holy grail "A World of Beasts," drew a beautiful thing!  
imgur . com /Cscj1eh
> 
> Look at our Beast boy, in all his glory! ♡ Thank you again, Whiggity :)


End file.
